After an almost two decade long wait, an Okami sequel is finally on the way, but that isn’t the only thing Hideki Kamiya has in mind at his new studio.
Last year when PlatinumGames co-founder Hideki Kamiya announced that he would be leaving the very same studio he set up, the big question on everyone’s minds was: what’s next? Well, a year later we finally have an answer, which is the one thing many fans thought would never be possible, a sequel to the PS2 classic Okami. While Capcom while be publishing the title, it’s actually coming from Kamiya’s brand new studio Clovers (an obvious reference to the original studio that made Okami, Clover), and speaking to IGN, both Kamiya and Clovers’ president and CEO Kento Koyama about setting up the new studio, as well as if there’s anything else in the works.
Koyama explained that the studio is “currently focusing on developing a contracted title for a publisher (the sequel to Okami). We’ll be focusing on that one for a while, but we’d like to create our own IP at Clovers in the future. That isn’t to say that making IP is a top priority of ours, though. What’s important is bringing players the most interesting and fun titles that we can.”
Kamiya went on to explain that the studio’s strength is that it’s a “group with a unique sense of creativity. I’ve never been too fixated on creating only original properties, even when I was at PlatinumGames. When I was there, the company also developed IP belonging to other companies, like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Whether it’s an existing IP or a new one, our mission at Clovers is to create unique games that only we can make.”
That’s obviously an exciting prospect for fans of Kamiya’s style of work and the kind of studio he cultivates, but considering we only got a pre-rendered trailer for the Okami sequel’s reveal, I can imagine that anything else is years away at this point. Time to start counting the days until we get Okami 2 (or whatever it ends up being called). At least we know Capcom is interested in bringing back more of its older titles!
